


Doing His Duty

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27078649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: All Jim has ever done was his duty
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Doing His Duty

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the SentinelThursday prompt 'aversion'

Doing His Duty

by Bluewolf

Jim Ellison had what might be called a 'normal' life until he was eight. He saw little of his father, who worked long hours (although he didn't have to) but he was happy with the adult figures in his life - the housekeeper, Sally, and Grace, the woman he thought was his mother. In actual fact, his mother had died when he was only a few days old; Grace, the mother of his brother Stevie, was actually his stepmother, though she had been genuinely fond of her husband's first son.

But Grace had left a few days after Christmas, the year Jim was eight. She had taken time to tell Jim why she was leaving, asking him to tell Stevie when he thought Stevie was old enough to understand. She still loved William, but had become unhappy at the amount of time William spent working. She so seldom saw him. And although she would have liked to take both Jimmy and Stevie with her, she knew that if she did William wouldn't like it and would accuse her of kidnapping them.

And then she left.

Jim never did get the chance to explain it all to Stevie. Almost immediately, their father turned their lives into a competition; and where until then they had been fond of each other, the competition turned them into rivals.

Stevie seemed happy enough with his new life - but Stevie seemed to have inherited their father's business sense, where Jim found business and business tactics a pointless waste of time. And so, as soon as he was eighteen, Jim walked out and joined the army.

He did well there, and was happy until the day he was in command of a small team sent into Peru - and their helicopter crashed, leaving the rest of his team dead. He was found by one of the small local tribes and they took him in; and he worked with them for eighteen months before, finally, he was rescued.

Just who told the media about him he never discovered, but he was interviewed by a freelance reporter about his time in Peru; and that ended up as an article in NEWS magazine headlined 'Beyond the call...' He was sent a copy, and put it, unread, into a box that held some mementoes of his life.

His period of enlistment ended while he was in Peru, and he decided to take the honorable discharge he was due; returning to Cascade he chose not to contact his father and brother, and joined the police.

And found himself named Officer of the Year - basically, a hero - because of his success rate.

A hero.

That was when Jim realized that he had a decided aversion to being called a hero when he knew that all he had ever done was his duty.


End file.
